Okay so, someone may have beaten me to suggesting this, or suggested something vaguely similar prior, but yeah, I'm gonna post this anyway.

It's like this, whenever you make a character, you get to choose your own speshul personal color, a name, and the type of starter armor you get... and here's the important part- the starter armor and helm have a selection of colorschemes for you to choose from. No other armor or helm or anything in the game has this kind of thing, and so unless you've got a phat pile of armors and helms you really don't have any choices that don't look ridiculous when paired with your personal color.

So what I'm suggesting is, is that other things also get some degree of alternate colorschemes/designs. Except for the armors that are different but are virtually identical in appearance save for color or really minor design changes (coughcoughJelly line cough), of course. And I'm not saying EVERYTHING should get alternate palletes/designs either, or that they should ALL get the same number of alternate appearances- more like 1 or 2 alternates for each armor that gets it.

Like you go to the armor you want, you equip it as a costume, and it asks you whether you want the "default" pattern or an alternative.

I could suggest doing this for weapons as well (remember, only an alternate APPEARANCE, it doesn't have to look or act TOO different), but then I might as well ask for the option to drop fridges and cows on menders.